The invention is directed to patient supporting tables having a patient support plate with a cut-out through which the body surface of a patient lying on the support plate is accessible for medical purposes.
Patient supporting tables of the type described above are required for a great variety of applications wherein it is necessary that the body surface of a patient be accessible through the cut-out, whether to permit an operative procedure to be performed or to permit application of a medical device, for example, a lithotriptor, to the body surface of the patient. The support plate is adjustable relative to the base member in order to be able to position the patient as desired.
Such a patient supporting table is disclosed and described in a brochure published by Siemens AG, and entitled: "LITHOSTAR Universeller urologischer Arbeitsplatz fuer Therapie und Diagnostik". The printing reference number is A91001-M1027-G490-01 PA 4864.
In the disclosed patient supporting table, a shockwave source is arranged under the support plate and the table is provided with a rectangular cut-out. The shockwave source is provided for outputting focused shockwaves for disintegrating calculi, for example kidney stones, situated in the body of the patient.
For such a treatment, a shockwave tube is brought into engagement with the body surface of a patient lying on the support plate through the cut-out of the support plate. The tube then is acoustically coupled to the body surface of the patient so that the calculus to be disintegrated is situated in the focus of the shockwaves. Under the influence of a series of focused shockwaves generated by the shockwave tube, the calculus disintegrates into fragments that can be eliminated in a natural way.
As a consequence of the construction of the cut-out in the disclosed table, only a small portion of the patient's body surface situated in the region of the cut-out is accessible. Since, for the sake of a stable positioning of the body relative to the focus of the shockwaves, the patient can only be positioned lying on his/her stomach or on his/her back, the irradiation of shockwaves can only ensue frontally or dorsally.